Friday, April 02, 2010

Buy New Apple iPad for $50,000, Get Free Hyundai

From the NY Times: -- That’s not exactly the equation, but that’s the idea. Anyone who buys a new Hyundai Equus — the car will be out in September — will receive an iPad instead of a printed owner’s manual.“Who reads a 300-page manual anyway?” asked John Krafcik, the chief executive of Hyundai North America. “Instead, they’ll have a gorgeous color touchscreen loaded with the manual electronically, as well as photos of the whole Hyundai lineup.”

Anon at 9:36 has it right, its reliability durability and inexpensive that are what are important. Given that Hyundai puts a 10 year 100,000 mile warranty on these cars that says something about durability. Compare that with the old days of 3 months or 5k miles in the 1970s.

You're making this up. There are no computer parts made in the US anymore; there is no money to be made in that business.

I was referring to the knockoffs.

I, personally, have quit considering cars from General Motors, Innovation will cease. Normal business incentives are gone. They will likely start reverse engineering Hyundais. Look for it.

Well, that means more affordable General Motors cars for me. That, and their manuals won't require batteries.

Free them from environmental regulations and let them just make affordably large, turboless, RWD cars. It's safe to say that they won't copy off of Hyundai. Hyundai will copy off of them, detune it and slap the H on the car.

"If there was such similarity, it ends with them all being "big trucks". A Ford is not going to get mistaken for a Toyota. A Toyota might be mistaken for another Eastern transplant, though"...

LOL! Where were you in the seventies?

Though the US refused to allow Toyata to import their half ton and three quarter ton pick-ups into this country at that time there were Toyotas all over the planet that looked just like the Ford Econoline...

>"So far, we've been unable to charge our iPads in any USB port on a non-Apple Computer. Apple Tech Support has told us that the iPad is designed for the 10W AC adapter that comes with it, so if you want to use anything else, all bets are off..."

This continued use of proprietary technology has kept me from buying Apple products - that, and the high prices.

Wow, you guys will argue about anything. Fact is, this is another brilliant marketing job by Hyundai, which will do nothing but help them continue to gain market share in the U.S. And they do this brilliant marketing because that's how you keep a company going -- not waiting for handouts from Washington because not enough people want to buy your products.